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Tracing Batista's Fall, Fidel's Rise

By

Mary Anastasia O'Grady

Updated July 10, 2002 12:01 a.m. ET

The very mention of the Cuban Revolution conjures up images of a young Fidel Castro dressed in battle fatigues, looking defiant in a rebel camp somewhere in the Sierra Maestra, Cuba's eastern mountains. Perhaps he is even posing for the camera with one of his comrades, his brother Raul, say, or Che Guevara, visiting from the mountains in central Cuba.

This is the stuff of legend. It presents Castro and his "sierra" forces as the sole proprietors of the overthrow of the dictator Fulgencio Batista. A rebel army...